Famous Forbidding Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Forbidding poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous forbidding poems. These examples illustrate what a famous forbidding poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Newbolt, Sir Henry
...ught to be doing:
And I rode nearer, and added, "I can only suppose
You have not seen the Commander-in-Chief's order
Forbidding English officers to annoy their Allies
By hunting and shooting."
But he stood and saluted
And said earnestly, "I beg your pardon, Sir,
I was only going out to shoot a sparrow
To feed my cat with."
So there was the whole picture,
The lovely early morning, the occasional shell
Screeching and scattering past us, the empty landscape, -...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...ilitary pride
Shone in the brass and burning steel of war;
For in this hall more worthy of a strain
No envious sound forbidding peace is heard,
Fierce song of battle kindling martial rage
And desp'rate purpose in heroic minds:
But sacred truth fair science and each grace
Of virtue born; health, elegance and ease
And temp'rate mirth in social intercourse
Convey rich pleasure to the mind; and oft
The sacred muse in heaven-breathing song
Doth wrap the soul in extasy d...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.
They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.
I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus tha...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and ...Read more of this...
by
Oguibe, Olu
...
and my throat feels like a concrete floor
the power of tears has deserted me
i walk through the streets of this forbidding town
searching for faces i used to know
and your memory is like a faded picture in the pocket
here and there i hear your name like the distant crack of a whip
and there is a dull pain where the scars remain
i recall your stubbornness and the ring of blood on your wrist
and i embrace this cold that severed you from me
once i howled ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...e rough shades did never breed,
Unless the goddess that in rural shrine
Dwell'st here with Pan or Sylvan, by blest song
Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog
To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood.
LADY. Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise
That is addressed to unattending ears.
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift
How to regain my severed company,
Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo
To give me answer from her mossy couch.
COMUS: W...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...baggy at the knees;
One ear was somewhat missing, no need to tell you why,
And he scowled upon a hostile world from one forbidding eye.
The cottagers of Rotherhithe knew something of his fame,
At Hammersmith and Putney people shuddered at his name.
They would fortify the hen-house, lock up the silly goose,
When the rumour ran along the shore: GROWLTIGER'S ON THE LOOSE!
Woe to the weak canary, that fluttered from its cage;
Woe to the pampered Pekinese, that faced Gro...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...passage
Shut against them, barred securely
By the trunks of trees uprooted,
Lying lengthwise, lying crosswise,
And forbidding further passage.
"We must go back," said the old man,
"O'er these logs we cannot clamber;
Not a woodchuck could get through them,
Not a squirrel clamber o'er them!"
And straightway his pipe he lighted,
And sat down to smoke and ponder.
But before his pipe was finished,
Lo! the path was cleared before him;
All the trunks had Kwasind...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Edward
...f garden rows, and ancient damson trees
Topping a hedge, a bent path to a door
A low thick bush beside the door, and me
Forbidding her to pick.
As for myself,
Where first I met the bitter scent is lost.
I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,
Sniff them and think and sniff again and try
Once more to think what it is I am remembering,
Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,
Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,
With no meaning, than this bitter one.Read more of this...
by
Russell, George William
...LOVE and pity are pleading with me this hour.
What is this voice that stays me forbidding to yield,
Offering beauty, love, and immortal power,
Æons away in some far-off heavenly field?
Though I obey thee, Immortal, my heart is sore.
Though love be withdrawn for love it bitterly grieves:
Pity withheld in the breast makes sorrow more.
Oh that the heart could feel what the mind believes!
Cease, O love, thy fiery and gentle ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...p the high repute
Which he through hazard huge must earn. But they
Dreaded not more th' adventure than his voice
Forbidding; and at once with him they rose.
Their rising all at once was as the sound
Of thunder heard remote. Towards him they bend
With awful reverence prone, and as a God
Extol him equal to the Highest in Heaven.
Nor failed they to express how much they praised
That for the general safety he despised
His own: for neither do the Spirits ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ls not from us, naming thee the tree
Of knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil;
Forbids us then to taste! but his forbidding
Commends thee more, while it infers the good
By thee communicated, and our want:
For good unknown sure is not had; or, had
And yet unknown, is as not had at all.
In plain then, what forbids he but to know,
Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise?
Such prohibitions bind not. But, if death
Bind us with after-bands, what profits then
...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...You cannot always keep
That unfakable young surface.
You must learn your lines -
Anger, amusement, sleep;
Those few forbidding signs
Of the continuous coarse
Sand-laden wind, time;
You must thicken, work loose
Into an old bag
Carrying a soiled name.
Parch then; be roughened; sag;
And pardon me, that
I Could find, when you were new,
No brash festivity
To wear you at, such as
Clothes are entitled to
Till the fashion changes....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...re are your cavils about the Soul now?
7
A sterile landscape covers the ore—there is as good as the best, for all the forbidding
appearance;
There is the mine, there are the miners;
The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish’d; the hammers-men are at hand with
their
tongs
and hammers;
What always served, and always serves, is at hand.
Than this, nothing has better served—it has served all:
Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...hat of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?
No dainty dolce affettuoso I;
Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck’d, forbidding, I have arrived,
To be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of the universe;
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.
17On my way a moment I pause;
Here for you! and here for America!
Still the Present I raise aloft—Still the Future of The States I harbinge,
glad and sublime;
And for the Past, I pronounce what the a...Read more of this...
by
John, David St
...adness
I could understand, & even love; & so, I spent hours
Walking the back streets of Trastevere looking in the most
Forbidding & derelict shops for some element of ash
She’d never seen before. It may seem odd to you, now,
But this was the single ambition of my life. Finally.
I had to give it up; I'd failed. She knew them all. So,
To celebrate our few months together, I gave her
Before we parted one night a necklace with a huge fake
Ruby. She slip...Read more of this...
by
Mandelstam, Osip
...Today, my love,
leaves are thrashing the wind
just as pedestrians are erecting again the buildings of this drab
forbidding city,
and our lives, as I lose track of them,
are the lives of others derailing in time and
getting things done.
Impossible to make sense of any one face
or mouth, though
each distance
is clear, and you are miles
from here.
Let your pure
space crowd my heart,
that we might stay awhile longer amid the flying
debris.
This moment,
I swear...Read more of this...
by
Lazarus, Emma
...her! For the love we bear,
Not for thy fame's sake, do we weave this crown,
And feel thy presence in the sacred air,
Forbidding us to weep that thou art gone....Read more of this...
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